Create Lat+Long from a string?

Question

In Windows Phone (mango) I am using Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.

I currently have:

var _City = "Denver";
var _State = "Colorado";

And I want a pushpin:

var _Pushpin = new Pushpin();
_Pushpin.Location = new GeoCoordinate();
map1.Children.Add(_Pushpin);
map1.Center = _Pushpin.Location;

How can I create the correct GeoCoordinate from the strings alone?

Update with solution (using Bing): http://blog.jerrynixon.com/2011/10/bing-maps-geocoding.html

Answer 1

There are a couple of ways...

1) Get a Bing Maps API key and call into their web services to get the coordinates. ( see here for an example )
2) Have a local database of cities / states / coordinates to look up against. This is probably the preferred option if the app must run offline, although in that case you wouldn't see the maps anyway.